Postmodernism is a school of thought which emerged in reaction to the chaos of World War II; the aim of postmodern thinking is to question the foundations of our accepted ways of thinking, especially such ideas as "order" and "hierarchy," so as to expose the actual "nothingness" of existence. Postmodernism has greatly influ enced literary criticism over the past few decades; many different postmodernist critical theories have developed; most notable, for our purposes, are "poststructural theories." Post structural theories, according to M.H. Abrams, in his Glossary of Literary Terms, "expressly 'challenge' and undertake to 'destabilize,' and in many instances to 'undermine' and 'subvert,' what they identify as the foundational assumptions, concepts, procedures, and findings in all the traditional modes of discourse in Western civilization" (259).
In other words, poststructuralists call into question the ways in which our society, a print-based culture, relates to text, our chosen mode of discourse since the advent of the printing press.
So what does postmodernism have to do with hypertext?
As a quickly growing and developing new form of writing, a form which has been hailed as the greatest development in writing since the printing press, hypertext embodies many of the characteristics of poststructuralism's ideas of what writing really sh ould be all about, rather than the way in which writing is dealt with in the world of print.
Here are the major areas in which poststructuralists take issue with literature:
the static versus the fluid
the territorial versus the networkable
the linear versus the non-linear
the authority of the author, versus reader interaction
Poststructuralists argue that ideas and thoughts do not remain static, as they do in the physical form of books, but they are ever-changing. The physical properties of a book are criticized as perpetuating a static, as well as passive, approach to writ ing and reading. For example, the fact that books must undergo a lengthy and expensive reprinting in order to reflect a change in ideas (revision) makes evident the static quality of knowledge as presented through the print medium. The very physical prope rties of hypertext do for writing and reading what poststructuralists have been talking about for years before its advent. As an electronic form of writing, it is quite accessible and lends itself very easily to revision, therefore much more effectively r endering the reality of change in thought. Even its physical manifestation is fluid: while printed text has a physical size and shape, hypertext flows into any size screen which the reader specifies.
The idea of printed writing as being static is also related to the isolation of printed writings from each other. Poststructuralists regard different writings as all being connected together in what is termed the "text" -- that is, the collective body of all writing. Ilana Synder, in Hypertext, the Electronic Labyrinth, writes of Roland Barthes' theory on this subject: "Barthes' theory of discourse portrays the text not as a discrete territory but as a polyvocal and intertextual 'social space' ( 51).
One cannot regard a single body of writing without taking into consideration the collective "text" which affects the reading and the production of every instance of writing. Once again, the printed word draws the criticism of posties; books, in their a ctual, physical separation from each other, do not foster the interrelationship of text; rather, they encourage isolation of knowledge and isolation of thought.
Yet while books are limited by the physical boundaries of their form, the very beauty of the nature of hypertext is its networkability. Through its hyperlinks, hypertext lends itself perfectly to Barthes' idea of an interconnected "text." With the clic k of a mouse, hypertext allows for the simultaneous reading of many different works, in different genres, on different topics, etc, and therefore allows for a broader interpretation and range of thought, thus moving away from a static approach to analytic al reading.
The bound, printed work, as well as being static and isolated, also is criticized by poststructuralists for its encouragement of linear, hierarchical thought, which they purport as acting as a limit to the reader. The fact that the pages are bound toge ther, one after another, facilitates the approach to reading each page only in the order in which they are bound and therefore severely limiting the potential interpretation of the work. In fact, most books are written in a linear manner, with a definite beginning, a body which requires a step-by-step build-up of the ideas presented by the author, and a conclusion which generally draws together the point(s) of the entire book. Therefore, reading a book "out-of-order" would not make much sense, due to its construction. This approach to writing and reading, poststructuralists argue, limits and controls the reader's interpretation, experience, and pattern of thought.
Hypertext reflects much more the postmodernist vision of what text really should be like. There is not really a specific order in which to read hypertext; the order is determined by the reader's choice of links, which could take him/her in a countless number of directions and facilatating any number of interpretations. There is no definite "conclusion" in hypertext; the text ends when the reader stops reading. In hyperfiction, especially, the reader determines the direction and outcome of the story, de pending upon which links he/she follows during the course of the reading. Also, hypertext links, unlike footnotes in printed works, are not secondary to the text to which they are linked. Footnotes promote a hierarchy of ideas presented in books: the foot note, as a sort of "aside," is not as important, in a book, as the main text itself. Hyperlinks, however, destroy such an idea of a hierarchy of thought; for when the reader follows a link, that link becomes the main text, and not just a side comment.
The aspect of printed writing which comes under the most attack by poststructuralists is the fact that it sets up the author as being a supreme authority. The author is the center of the text, determining which direction it will take and therefore seve rely limiting the reader's ability to interpret the knowledge and ideas presented in the work. Due to the construct of the printed work, the reader's must submit to the author's control -- an idea which is sharply criticized by postmodernism, which calls for an abandonment of such restrictions and boundaries which have been placed upon writing by a book culture. Time and again, references are made back to the days before the printing press, when manuscripts were copied over and over by hand; the manuscrip t copier also interacted with the text by adding his own comments to it, and these comments were considered just as important as the "original" text. There was no real notion of the authority of the original author. Poststructuralists call for an interact ion with text in this same manner and have attempted to annihilate the importance of the author as the central conscious of the text.
While the static nature of books makes it virtually impossible to cast aside the idea of a single, controlling author, hypertext brings us back to a manuscript mentality, calling for a much greater interaction between the reader and the text. For examp le, the electronic arena allows for a much easier correspondence between a reader and a writer of a particular document, and the writer can then take into account the opinions of his/her readers and easily revise the work. More important, however, is the actual interaction the reader has with the text. The reader determines what shape and course the text will take by choosing which hyperlinks to follow. Especially in hyperfiction, the reader determines the outcome of the story, depending upon which links are followed, and thus becomes the creator of the text, blurring the boundary between the reader and the writer of the text. (This, of course, occurs to a great yet limited extent, for, in the end, it is the author who determines which links to provide as choices to the reader, and therefore the author still limits the reader's own interpretation of text -- though not nearly so much as the medium of print does.)
Sources
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc, 1993.
Snyder, Ilana. Hypertext The Electronic Labyrinth. Victoria, Australia: Melbourne University Press, 1996.